Sit on it, Warren

If you are, say, lost in a dark cave with the sounds of swooping bats it is best not to be alone or feel alone. In that sense, it is comforting to know that while we suffer under the hardship of having the incompetent Julia Eileen Gillard as our political leader, the Americans have Barack Hussein Obama.

President Obama announced his latest jobs plan to a joint session of Congress on 8 September. Now, if your last jobs plan in February 2009 had been an absolute failure. If it had contributed to soaring levels of government indebtedness and, 2½ years later, had taken unemployment from eight to over nine per cent you might rethink your strategy. But then you might not be a left-wing ideologue surrounded by a coterie of Keynesian advisers. In that world, your plan did not fail. It prevented things from being worse. You can never be wrong.

Armed with an invulnerable theory, President Obama urged Congress to pass his “American Jobs Act”. In fact, in a speech lasting 34 minutes, he…